The 2022 skummunity Award Winners

The skummunity awards were created to honor the explorers, rule-breakers, dreamers, and innovators in the branded merchandise industry. At the live skucon virtual event on January 18th, four recipients were recognized for their radical leadership and generosity:

Supplier Community Champion Award: Alex Symms, National Acct Manager, Chameleon Like 

The supplier community champion of the year award recognizes the supplier representative who inspires the industry with optimism and ambition and who overcomes adversity, rising to encourage and support both distributors and fellow suppliers with passionate professionalism. 

Mark Graham, commonsku’s President, and Chief Brand Officer said, “The supplier community champion award recognizes someone who is there when you need them, ready with a fast and creative idea, and someone who works to make all distributors look like winners while also lending a hand to their fellow supplier colleagues. We are honored to recognize Alex Symms for his amazing generosity and overcoming spirit. When the pandemic hit, Alex Symms lost his job. But instead of simply accepting defeat, Alex reinvested himself: he saw it as an opportunity to improve himself, spending hours getting his industry certification, gaining his CAS and MAS from ASI and his MASI from ASI. Alex embodies what a community champion represents: positivity, helpfulness, grace through adversity, and incredible ingenuity. Alex’s story is an incredible come-back story and over 12-18 months, he harnessed his energy to invest in himself while also helping others.” 

Alex, who (of course) accepted his award from a Dallas hotel room due to his travel schedule as a supplier, responded, “I was out of a job for a couple of months and my wife was too, so I buckled down and took classes, including even google analytics certification, learning anything I could to bring value, I learned that you can only control what you can control. You have to make the best of it. I’m incredibly honored and blessed. We as an industry have overcome a lot of adversity over the years: pandemic, supply chain, even a recession a few years back. Adversity always makes us smarter. I’ve learned to accept adversity as a path that helps us innovate.”

Supplier Connected Workflow Award: Jon Norris, Chief Operating Officer, Starline, Inc.

The supplier connected workflow award goes to a modern mover and shaker, a supplier who is at the cutting edge of business process and understands that to connect the entire workflow - from ideation to inventory to electronic PO to order status and ship notifications - means a seamless experience, faster and more accurate orders, and a simpler life for their customers.

Catherine Graham, commonsku’s CEO, presented the supplier connected workflow award to Jon Norris, Chief Operating Officer at Starline, Inc., stating, “I can’t think of a more appropriate person to be recognized for this award. Jon is a tireless advocate for open standards across the industry and is a founding member and driver behind PromoStandards.”

Jon Norris accepted the award from his Buffalo home: “Thank you for this award Catherine. I had this whole story prepared in response to this award but it got scrapped yesterday when Buffalo got hit with 28” of snow in 12 hours, it was enough snow to shut the city down. We made a conscious decision in the morning to not shut the business down and to not send a press release to the industry, instead, we let the machine take over. We mobilized our remote workforce to answer the phones and let our supply chain integrations hold down the ship: customer service, order entry, and all of our shipping processes were managed remotely through our integrated workflow. We ended up yesterday with zero people in this entire facility processing 4800 inventory lookups, 4200 automated order status checks, and 2300 tracking requests. And we processed this with fewer people, at about a third of our normal volume. I know over this last year we’ve lived with a tight labor market and a tight supply chain, but with promostandards, the industry’s only true open standard, I think there’s a very clear path forward to drive these supply chain efficiencies. It’s great to have a partner like commonsku, you are at the forefront of innovation and I know the path to getting a connected workflow is not all pretty but I think if you get enough connected distributors, connected suppliers, and connected service providers, we’ve demonstrated that it works.”

Distributor Entrepreneur of the Year Award: Kelly Henderson and Elise Lindborg, founders of Brand Pride

The Distributor Entrepreneur of the Year represents grit, hustle, perseverance, resilience, and creativity. From adversity to breakthrough, this distributor embodies today’s modern, entrepreneurial spirit and their growth journey inspires us all to reach deep and go big.

Catherine Graham remarked, “This pair has been through an unbelievable journey over the past couple of years, ups and downs in both their business and personal lives, including cancer, a move across 3 states, and a complete rebrand of their business.  They have successfully come out the other side and kicked some serious ass in the process to have their highest sales year ever in 2021.”

Elise Lindborg (CEO) and Kelli Henderson (COO) of Brand Pride accepted the award from their new Las Vegas offices. Elise replied, “We’ve been in the business for 22 years and it took 20 years for us to find our why. Our previous name was Zippy Dogs (“your brand companion”) but in 2018 we went to a conference where all Fortune 500 companies were represented and brought their LGBT employees to discuss how to be more inclusive in the workplace. We exhibited and of course, had some really cool branded merch, but we also created a survey and asked for the name of their company and asked one simple question: ‘Does your company use an LGBT vendor for your Pride activations?’ Of course, we thought the survey results would be very favorable but when we tallied up about 1500 responses we discovered that less than 6% of Fortune 500 companies use LGBT vendors for Pride. We thought, ‘we’re an LGBT owned company and this is not right, they need to walk the talk.’ And so we rebranded to Brand Pride and began marketing to the community. It’s amazing when you focus how quickly your business will grow. The response was tremendous.”

Distributor Community Champion Award: Brenda Speirs, CEO Buzztag 

The distributor community champion award recognizes the most outstanding distributor personality in the industry who continually invests in the wellness and growth of their peers. Mark Graham stated, “This recipient constantly welcomes newcomers to the industry, encourages seasoned pros, and builds a bridge to mentorship, leading by example. This distributor gives selflessly, shares their ideas freely, offers a ready smile and a solution, giving other people a voice. It’s our honor to present this year’s award to Brenda Speirs, CEO of Buzztag.” 

Brenda Speirs started a grassroots mindshare group from within the commonsku community that soon multiplied from one group, eventually soaring to 13 different mindshare groups featuring over 100 professionals. Brenda named the community “The Ripple Collective.” Brenda accepted the award from her Bend, OR location, stating, “I want to pay a debt of gratitude to Catherine and Mark and commonsku because when I first came into this industry I was in hospitality, worked in the family restaurant business, and worked corporately, and if you ever had a challenge you would talk to your neighbor or ask them for help. When I came into this industry, I immediately started sharing in the same way but was stunned when my boss chastised me for sharing insight on how to imprint something with a supplier. Rather than let that defeat me I eventually let it shape me and found a place here in this platform and community which allowed us to give rise to a movement like the Ripple Collective, which pairs people together in mastermind groups for support and sharing.” 

A huge shoutout and thank you to our sponsor and friends at Clearmount for designing, creating, and delivering the skummunity Awards for this year’s winners.

Is there someone you’d like to nominate for a skummunity award? Let us know!